


Almost Blue

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Coffee Shops, F/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 02:36:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16399775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: There was something about her skin - his, too, but mostly hers, her décolletage almost translucent above the low necklines of her gowns and bracketed by that tumble of dark hair either side - that looked luminous on film back when everything was in black and white. In colour, she looked like what she was - undead, bloodless, almost blue.





	Almost Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FairestCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairestCat/gifts).



Victor doesn't want to be the kind of guy who lurks about creepily outside a coffee shop window peering in at the staff, but under the circumstances it's probably worth the risk. If he were braver he'd cup his hands against the glass on either side of his eyes, but he's not, so he makes do with squinting through the glare of the lights and waits impatiently for people to move out of the way so he can double check what was almost definitely a mistake--

Oh. No. It wasn't a mistake. There she is.

She was always beautiful, but it's different these days. There were times eighty or a hundred and forty years ago when she poured herself into those clothes she collected as mementoes of her favourite meals - emerald satin in the Hollywood days, or a Victorian corset she laced to nineteen incredible inches - and allowed him to take her out, to show her off like she was an accomplishment he'd made and deserved to be proud of. She's wearing a black polyester shirt now, and a cap on her head. Her hair pokes through the adjustable back of it in a long black plait. He remembers it loose, long enough that the ends of it brushed her marble-white skin below the hem of her miniskirt in 1966.

He joins the queue. Of course he does. He never could resist her.

And when she sees him, her expression flickers through surprise and panic and guilt and sadness so quickly that no human would see anything except the bland smile she finishes on.

"Can I take your order?" she asks.

He says her name. Not the abbreviation on her badge - _Meg_ , ugly and stunted and crude - but her full, lovely name. _Marguerite_. Whispers it, feeling almost choked by it. He remembers her fingers on his throat and chest and cock before she was threatened into fleeing, her nails as keen as razors splitting the meat of him open in long furrows that healed almost as quickly as she made them.

"Your order?" she asks again, just a hint of desperation in her voice now. She knows as well as he does that he can't drink coffee.

"Never mind," he mutters, and turns to leave. It's crowded, but he doesn't have to push his way through; like always, people fall away from him unconsciously wherever he walks, as though they're repelled by invisible magnets.

Before, she would have followed him. She followed him across the Atlantic Ocean once, writhing from withdrawal and hunger in her box of dirt in the hold next to him, rationing solo passengers as long as they could so as not to be discovered. She followed him into a studio contract, laughing uproariously at the Dracula script he showed her once and telling him he'd be a fool not to take it. There was something about her skin - his, too, but mostly hers, her décolletage almost translucent above the low necklines of her gowns and bracketed by that tumble of dark hair either side - that looked luminous on film back when everything was in black and white. In colour, she looked like what she was - undead, bloodless, almost blue - although of course by then she'd already trodden on enough New World toes that staying in Hollywood, staying with _him_ , was no longer an option.

Would she follow him now?

He waits around the corner of the coffee shop, barely feeling the snow on his cool white skin.

When she comes out to find him she's not alone, and he feels a smouldering, bitter little burn of disappointment - then she looks at him, her green eyes as unfathomably deep as the universe, and he can feel her intent as keenly as he first felt her teeth ripping at his throat on another winter night just like this one.

"This is Jackson," she says, tilting her head at the other barista who's deftly sliding a clove cigarette from a packet with his pretty lips. "Jackson, Victor."

Jackson's eyebrows, one pierced at the outer edge, raise up high enough to wrinkle his forehead. "Funny coincidence, you look just like Victor Carew." He strikes a match, lights his cigarette without offering the others one, and blows a lungful of smoke up into the icy air in a way he obviously thinks makes him look very cool and alluring. "You probably don't know who that is," he adds, an insufferably smug little smirk on his mouth.

Beside him, Marguerite rolls her eyes. "Jackson has a film degree instead of a personality. Vic, my shift's almost over, do you want to get something to eat?"

When his mouth starts watering like this, he can never resist touching the end of his tongue to the pointy tips of his lengthening teeth. "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry."

It'll take more than the gift of an irritating student for dinner to fix these decades of silence, but as she slits a neat line into Jackson's artery with her fingernail for Victor to drink - the same intimate little ritual they shared so many thousands of times before - it feels like a promising start.


End file.
